January 16, 2014

The Corrido of America: Music and Mexican Migration in the 21st Century

The Ashland University College of Arts and Sciences' Symposium Against Indifference: Engaging Latin America and the Caribbean presents a program which examines the immigration effect on the Mexican music scene in California. The presentation by Josh Kun,
Associate Professor of Communication and director of the Norman Lear
Center's Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg, will be held on Thursday, January 23 at 7 p.m. in the Trustees Room of the Myers Convocation Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Professor Kun has conducted research on the regional Mexican
music scene in California and what the songs of artists tell us about
issues of immigration, cultural identity, transnational media and
U.S.-Mexico border politics. He is the author or editor of several
books, including the American Book Award winning Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, the co-edited anthologies Tijuana Dreaming: Life and Art at the Global Border and Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies, and most recently, his collaboration with The Library Foundation of Los Angeles for Angel City Press, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles: Sheet Music from the Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library.

As a curator, his exhibitions, music installations, and concerts
have appeared at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, The Getty Center, The
Grammy Museum, Grand Performances, The Los Angeles Central Library, and
the Autry National Center. He co-edits the book series Refiguring American Music for
Duke University Press and co-runs the non-profit record label and
digital archive The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation.

About Symposium Against Indifference

The College of Arts and Sciences at Ashland University inaugurated the Symposium Against Indifference in 2001 as a biennial series of events and lectures dedicated to overcoming apathy in the face of human concerns by raising awareness and promoting compassionate engagement. The Symposium seeks to challenge the University committee -- as well as the wider Ashland community -- toward a deeper understanding of difficult affairs and toward creative personal and corporate responses. Symposium themes from previous years include the Holocaust, human nature, terrorism, the promises and perils of technology, inquiry into what make a hero, globalization and Latin America.